At Melville's Tomb

Related poetry:

1. The Mountain Tomb Pour wine and dance if manhood still have pride, Bring roses if the rose be yet in bloom; The cataract smokes upon the mountain side, Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb. Pull down the blinds, bring fiddle and clarionet That there be no foot silent in the room Nor mouth from kissing, nor from […]...
2. When I am asleep and crumbling in the tomb When I am asleep and crumbling in the tomb, should you come To visit me, I will come forth with speed. You are for me the blast of the trumpet and the resurrection, So what shall I do? Dead or living, wherever you are, there am I. Without your lip I am a frozen and […]...
3. Answers I keep my answers small and keep them near; Big questions bruised my mind but still I let Small answers be a bulwark to my fear. The huge abstractions I keep from the light; Small things I handled and caressed and loved. I let the stars assume the whole of night. But the big answers […]...
4. The Ballad Of Lenin's Tomb This is the yarn he told me As we sat in Casey’s Bar, That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug In the Land of the Crimson Star; That Soviet guy with the single eye, And the face like a flaming scar. Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait To […]...
5. Concord Reconciled by death’s mild hand, that giving Peace gives wisdom, not more strong than mild, Love beholds them, each without misgiving Reconciled. Each on earth alike of earth reviled, Hated, feared, derided, and forgiving, Each alike had heaven at heart, and smiled. Both bright names, clothed round with man’s thanksgiving, Shine, twin stars above the […]...
6. At the Tomb of Napoleon I stood beside his sepulchre whose fame, Hurled over Europe once on bolt and blast, Now glows far off as storm-clouds overpast Glow in the sunset flushed with glorious flame. Has Nature marred his mould? Can Art acclaim No hero now, no man with whom men side As with their hearts’ high needs personified? There […]...
7. Take Back the Virgin Page Written on Returning a Blank Book Take back the virgin page, White and unwritten still; Some hand, more calm and sage, The leaf must fill. Thoughts come, as pure as light Pure as even you require; But, oh! each word I write Love turns to fire. Yet let me keep the book: Oft shall my […]...
8. King Arthur's Tomb Hot August noon: already on that day Since sunrise through the Wiltshire downs, most sad Of mouth and eye, he had gone leagues of way; Ay and by night, till whether good or bad He was, he knew not, though he knew perchance That he was Launcelot, the bravest knight Of all who since the […]...
9. The Bishop Orders His Tomb At Saint Praxed's Church Vanity, saith the preacher, vanity! Draw round my bed: is Anselm keeping back? Nephews sons mine ah God, I know not! Well She, men would have to be your mother once, Old Gandolf envied me, so fair she was! What’s done is done, and she is dead beside, Dead long ago, and I am Bishop […]...
10. Some time Last night, my darling, as you slept, I thought I heard you sigh, And to your little crib I crept, And watched a space thereby; And then I stooped and kissed your brow, For oh! I love you so You are too young to know it now, But some time you shall know! Some time […]...
11. An Arundel Tomb Side by side, their faces blurred, The earl and countess lie in stone, Their proper habits vaguely shown As jointed armour, stiffened pleat, And that faint hint of the absurd – The little dogs under their feet. Such plainness of the pre-baroque Hardly involves the eye, until It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still Clasped empty […]...
12. Meeting Dogs take new friends abruptly and by smell, Cats’ meetings are neat, tactual, caressive. Monkeys exchange their fleas before they speak. Snakes, no doubt, coil by coil reach mutual knowledge. We then, at first encounter, should be silent; Not court the cortex but the epidermis; Not work from inside out but outside in; Discover each […]...
13. The Poets Of The Tomb The world has had enough of bards who wish that they were dead, ‘Tis time the people passed a law to knock ’em on the head, For ‘twould be lovely if their friends could grant the rest they crave Those bards of ‘tears’ and ‘vanished hopes’, those poets of the grave. They say that life’s […]...
14. The Knight's Tomb Where is the grave of Sir Arthur O’Kellyn? Where may the grave of that good man be? By the side of a spring, on the breast of Helvellyn, Under the twigs of a young birch tree! The oak that in summer was sweet to hear, And rustled its leaves in the fall of the year, […]...
15. Rhyme For My Tomb Here lyeth one Who loved the sun; Who lived with zest, Whose work was done, Reward, dear Lord, Thy weary son: May he be blest With peace and rest, Nor wake again, Amen....
16. Love Lives Beyond The Tomb Love lives beyond the tomb, And earth, which fades like dew! I love the fond, The faithful, and the true. Love lives in sleep: ‘Tis happiness of healthy dreams: Eve’s dews may weep, But love delightful seems. ‘Tis seen in flowers, And in the morning’s pearly dew; In earth’s green hours, And in the heaven’s […]...
17. Veronica's Napkin The Heavenly Circuit; Berenice’s Hair; Tent-pole of Eden; the tent’s drapery; Symbolical glory of thc earth and air! The Father and His angelic hierarchy That made the magnitude and glory there Stood in the circuit of a needle’s eye. Some found a different pole, and where it stood A pattern on a napkin dipped in […]...
18. Night I love the silent hour of night, For blissful dreams may then arise, Revealing to my charmed sight What may not bless my waking eyes! And then a voice may meet my ear That death has silenced long ago; And hope and rapture may appear Instead of solitude and woe. Cold in the grave for […]...
19. Lover's Gifts XIII: Last Night in the Garden Last night in the garden I offered you my youth’s foaming wine. You Lifted the cup to your lips, you shut your eyes and smiled while I raised your veil, unbound your tresses, drawing down upon my Breast your face sweet with its silence, last night when the moon’s Dream overflowed the world of slumber. […]...
20. When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt (fragment) When Hope but made Tranquillity be felt A Flight of Hopes for ever on the wing But made Tranquillity a conscious Thing And wheeling round and round in sportive coil Fann’d the calm air upon the brow of Toil...
21. A Rhyme About an Electrical Advertising Sign I LOOK on the specious electrical light Blatant, mechanical, crawling and white, Wickedly red or malignantly green Like the beads of a young Senegambian queen. Showing, while millions of souls hurry on, The virtues of collars, from sunset till dawn, By dart or by tumble of whirl within whirl, Starting new fads for the shame-weary […]...
22. I should have been too glad, I see I should have been too glad, I see Too lifted for the scant degree Of Life’s penurious Round My little Circuit would have shamed This new Circumference have blamed The homelier time behind. I should have been too saved I see Too rescued Fear too dim to me That I could spell the Prayer I […]...
23. In Memoriam A. H. H.: 11. Calm is the morn without a sound Calm is the morn without a sound, Calm as to suit a calmer grief, And only thro’ the faded leaf The chestnut pattering to the ground: Calm and deep peace on this high wold, And on these dews that drench the furze. And all the silvery gossamers That twinkle into green and gold: Calm and […]...
24. Alexander It was the Great Alexander, Capped with a golden helm, Sate in the ages, in his floating ship, In a dead calm. Voices of sea-maids singing Wandered across the deep: The sailors labouring on their oars Rowed as in sleep. All the high pomp of Asia, Charmed by that siren lay, Out of their weary […]...
25. Ode To A Dressmaker's Dummy Papier-mache body; blue-and-black cotton jersey cover. Metal stand. Instructions included. Sears, Roebuck Catalogue O my coy darling, still You wear for me the scent Of those long afternoons we spent, The two of us together, Safe in the attic from the jealous eyes Of household spies And the remote buffooneries of the weather; So high, […]...
26. Some Like Poetry Write it. Write. In ordinary ink On ordinary paper: they were given no food, They all died of hunger. “All. How many? It’s a big meadow. How much grass For each one?” Write: I don’t know. History counts its skeletons in round numbers. A thousand and one remains a thousand, As though the one had […]...
27. People With Proud Chins I TELL them where the wind comes from, Where the music goes when the fiddle is in the box. Kids-I saw one with a proud chin, a sleepyhead, And the moonline creeping white on her pillow. I have seen their heads in the starlight And their proud chins marching in a mist of stars. They […]...
28. "It was wrong to do this," said the angel “It was wrong to do this,” said the angel. “You should live like a flower, Holding malice like a puppy, Waging war like a lambkin.” “Not so,” quoth the man Who had no fear of spirits; “It is only wrong for angels Who can live like the flowers, Holding malice like the puppies, Waging war […]...
29. Psalm 40 v.5-10 L. M. Christ our sacrifice. The wonders, Lord, thy love has wrought, Exceed our praise, surmount our thought; Should I attempt the long detail, My speech would faint, my numbers fail, No blood of beasts on altars spilt Can cleanse the souls of men from guilt; But thou hast set before our eyes An […]...
30. Ancestors Behold these jewelled, merchant Ancestors, Foregathered in some chancellery of death; Calm, provident, discreet, they stroke their beards And move their faces slowly in the gloom, And barter monstrous wealth with speech subdued, Lustreless eyes and acquiescent lids. And oft in pauses of their conference, They listen to the measured breath of night’s Hushed sweep […]...
31. Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
32. The Rose and the Cross Out of the seething cauldron of my woes, Where sweets and salt and bitterness I flung; Where charmed music gathered from my tongue, And where I chained strange archipelagoes Of fallen stars; where fiery passion flows A curious bitumen; where among The glowing medley moved the tune unsung Of perfect love: thence grew the Mystic […]...
33. Lover's Gifts XVIII: Your Days Your days will be full of cares, if you must give me your heart. My house by the cross-roads has its doors open and my mind is Absent, – for I sing. I shall never be made to answer for it, if you must give me Your heart. If I pledge my word to you […]...
34. The Wicked Postman Why do you sit there on the floor so quiet and silent, tell me, Mother dear? The rain is coming in through the open window, making you all Wet, and you don’t mind it. Do you hear the gong striking four? It is time for my brother To come home from school. What has happened […]...
35. First Death In Nova Scotia In the cold, cold parlor My mother laid out Arthur Beneath the chromographs: Edward, Prince of Wales, With Princess Alexandra, And King George with Queen Mary. Below them on the table Stood a stuffed loon Shot and stuffed by Uncle Arthur, Arthur’s father. Since Uncle Arthur fired A bullet into him, He hadn’t said a […]...
36. PUBLISHERS And then they pretend like owls With marble eyes and wizened stupidity I do not know why they cannot perceive True art But I will write Until sand evaporates And the moon consumes the sun I will write Even for the sake of art For myself and for those who feel Reading could lift them […]...
37. Malvern abbey the day was as grey as the abbey The light that filtered through the glass Had no disturbing shine about it No one inside was grasping to collect it The organ had its notes tucked in a corner Its sound blending the greyness into calm I was a stranger there but felt collated A dovecote […]...
38. God's Battleground God dwells in you; in pride and shame, In all you do to blight or bless; In all you are of praise and blame, In beauty or in ugliness. “Divine Creation” – What a fraud! God did not make you. . . You make God. God lives in me, in all I feel Of love […]...
39. The Desolate Field Vast and grey, the sky Is a simulacrum To all but him whose days Are vast and grey and- In the tall, dried grasses A goat stirs With nozzle searching the ground. My head is in the air But who am I. . . ? -and my heart stops amazed At the thought of love […]...
40. In Progress Ten years ago it seemed impossible That she should ever grow so calm as this, With self-remembrance in her warmest kiss And dim dried eyes like an exhausted well. Slow-speaking when she had some fact to tell, Silent with long-unbroken silences, Centered in self yet not unpleased to please, Gravely monotonous like a passing bell. […]...